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Jerome McDonough Biography (1946-)

Addresses: Home: 6106 Dartmouth, Amarillo, TX, 79109.

"I suppose I love theatre because I believe in the shortest possible distancebetween cause and effect. I want to help create an emotion and feel it bounce off another human being with no time and very little space intervening. Theatre can create a marvelous closeness.... My influences or, more accurately,my heroes range from Thornton Wilder to Tennessee Williams to Arthur Miller to Kaufmann and Hart to Mary Chase to Samuel Beckett to Grotowski and Schechner to Brecht to Edward Albee to Neil Simon to Jack Douglas. If there is some commonality in that list, I fail to perceive it. People who have personally touched my career include my teachers, Loula Grace Erdman, Kathleen Cook, Dr. A. K. Knott, and William Angus Moore; my parents, classical theatre man JeromeCharles McDonough and all-time compassion model Dorothy Ann Munson McDonough; editors William Talbot, Kay Myerly, and Shubert Fendrich and, perhaps mostcritically of all, editor/publisher/stupidity detector I. E. Clark, a close,close friend.... Composer/buddy John Gibson has alternately helped and distorted my perspective, whichever was needed at the time. John's wife, Dana Adams Gibson, and my wife, Raenell McDonough, have inspired me with both encouragement and occasional astonishing observations. Dr. Daniel Schwartz knows more about Broadway than I will ever learn, but he has been willing to share.A recently met friend, director Jane Armitage, promises to be a lifelong wonder.... More and more I now aspire toward commercial professional productions.I would very much like to be part of the Broadway/Off-Broadway/Regional Theatre realm and am attempting steps in those directions.... Mostly, I never want to be far from a space where theatre is actively evolving. If the words keep coming, perhaps I'll be allowed to help mold that theatre."

Nationality

American

Gender

Male

Occupation

writer, composer, director

Birth Details

November 2, 1946

Seguin, Texas

Famous Works

• Non-Theatrical Career
• Worked for the Pioneer Corporation 1969-71 as editor of The Jet and assistant to the director of publications and information. Teacher/coordinator of creative writing workshops at Amarillo College, TX, 1970-81. Teacher of theatre arts and English at Caprock School since 1970.
• Plays, Published
• The Betrothed, 1972; Filiation, 1973; Transceiver, 1974; Fables, 1974; The Old Oak Encounter, 1974; A Short Stretch at the Galluses (adapted from the musical A Stretch at the Galluses co-authored with John Gibson), 1974; Asylum, 1975; Dirge,1975; The Noble's Reward, 1975; Requiem, 1977; Eden, 1978; O, Little Town, 1978; Stages, 1979; It's Sad, SoSad When an Elf Goes Bad, 1979; Plots, 1981; The Nearest Star, 1981; Juvie, 1982; Roomers, 1983; The Least of These, 1983; A Christmas Carol (adapted from Charles Dickens) 1976. Contributor to periodicals, including Writer's Digest, The Dramatists GuildQuarterly, and Prolog.